Angel Isle

CHAPTER

9

As they crossed the threshold into the Council Chamber the cocoon around Maja vanished. Instantly a jolt of pure magic from Zara’s chamber overwhelmed her. Utter darkness. No sight, sound, smell, touch, only that blast of power. And beyond it, something else, something that was there and wasn’t. Was there and wasn’t in a way she knew…

And then she was standing, dazed, in the Council Chamber, with Ribek’s steadying arm around her. There was blank wall where the door had been.

“I’m all right,” she muttered, but he kept hold of her arm as he led her toward the center of the table where the Proctors were seated.

Everyone in the room seemed to be staring at them, as before, but the whole atmosphere had changed. There were doubt, anxiety, interest still, but instead of irritation with these two troublesome intruders, there was now something like awe in their faces. Ribek and she had spoken with the Sleeper of Larg, which no one before had done for who knew how long.

Ribek halted confidently in front of the long table and the President nodded to him to speak.

“Well, we’ve seen the Sleeper,” he said quietly. “I can’t tell you about most of what she said, except that you’ve got to make up your own minds what to do about us. But she gave us a message for you to prepare for a storm. It’s not going to be an ordinary bad storm, but a real monster. The Watchers at Tarshu have raised a great sea demon to destroy the Pirates’ fleet, and that’s woken other demons. One of them’s about to attack Larg. She’ll do her best to protect the city, and we’ve got a friend up on the hill outside the barrier who’ll try to help her, but she’s very old and tired and she thinks that it may be too much for her, even with the help of our friend. So if you’ll let us go back and tell him…”

The President glanced right and left. Everyone nodded. All stood. The Clerk rifled urgently through his folders and passed him a large card, from which he started to read in a carrying voice.

“The Court is adjourned. A State of Emergency is declared. Preparations for a major storm, Category Five, to begin immediately. All shipping to be double-moored. All citizens not engaged in official storm preparations to go to their homes. Curfew imposed. Volunteer Watch and fire crews to report immediately for duty. Watch authorized to arrest persons breaking the curfew on suspicion of looting. Automatic triple penalties imposed on those detected in actual looting…”

Everyone seemed to know the drill. Junior officials were already scampering out of the room, others hurrying in for orders. The President finished reading and put the card down.

“Gate Sergeant,” he called. “Ah, there you are. We’ll forget about your little outburst just now. Will you take our visitors back to the gate, provide them with a pass-box, free of charge in the circumstances, and give them every help you can to get them back to their friends the other side of the barrier before the storm breaks.”

“Horses, sir?”

“If we can find them in time. See to it, Guard Captain. Two steady horses to the South Gate, an experienced horseman to ride with the girl and bring the horses back, expense to be defrayed from the City Purse…”

As soon as Maja stepped out into the open she was aware of the coming storm. There was a sudden chill in the air and fine spray in the freshening wind, which came and went in sudden violent gusts. The bells of twenty towers were jangling at random. A line of uniformed men carrying staves were chivvying the last few loiterers off the square. And out to sea—the great ward was weaker there, Zara had said—something vaguely felt but huge and malevolent was moving toward the city.

They hurried back through almost empty streets the way they had come. It was late evening by the time they reached the gate. The Gate Sergeant left them under the arch while he went into the guardroom for the pass-box. By now Maja felt deathly tired from the magical batterings in the Council Chamber on top of the long day on the road. She hoped the horses would come. She doubted if she could make it up the hill on her own feet.

They waited. The howl of the wind strengthened, for Azarod himself now rode in it. She could feel Zara’s great ward vibrate to his violence. The Gate Sergeant seemed to be taking a long time. A thought struck her.

“Can you ride with only one hand, Ribek?” she said.

“Walk if I have to. Where’ve they all got to?”

Almost as he spoke the horses arrived, a wizened old groom riding one and leading the other. He was wearing a heavy oiled cloak and a wide-brimmed hat tied under the chin. His vast white moustache was pretty well all she could see of his face.

“Right you are, sir,” he said. “Wild weather already, and it’ll be worse up the hill. Hoist the little lady up behind me and we’ll be off.”

“There’s a problem,” said Ribek, holding his arm across his body as if he’d hurt it. “I’m not much of a horseman, and I’ve only got one hand I can use.”

“That’s all right, sir. I’ll take the reins and you can hang on to her mane. There’s a mounting block over there.”

Before they could move the Gate Sergeant returned with the pass-box and a couple more oiled cloaks like the groom’s. Maja’s was hugely too large for her, of course.

“Smallest I could find in the store,” he said, as he parceled her up in it and belted it round her. “It’s going to be wet up there on that hill.”

He lifted her up and she put her arms round the old groom. He smelled of stables. It was strange not to be riding with Ribek, but it wouldn’t have made sense. They moved to the block to let Ribek mount, and then on toward the outer archway.

“Good luck,” said the Gate Sergeant. “See you in the morning, supposing any of us are alive still.”

“Good luck to you, and thank you,” said Ribek.

The gale seemed to be blowing from the north, so for a little while they were still in the lee of the city wall, but the moment they were off the bridge it slammed into their backs, hissing and shrieking. Even a winter storm at Woodbourne had been nothing like this. If it had been from any other direction it would have blasted them off the road or forced them back. As it was, it seemed to be driving them on up the hill.

Despite that, the horses at once half shied. The groom cursed them and wrenched at the reins and drove them on. The riders bent themselves low over their necks to lessen the pressure on both themselves and the horses. Maja laid her right cheek against the groom’s greasy cloak and peered out to sea.

Night was coming early under the heavy clouds, but there was no need of moon or stars. Bolt after bolt of lightning slammed down into the waves, adding their thunder to the roar of the wind. Their glare marked the center of the storm, whirling the gale around it as it marched toward the land. It wasn’t as large as she’d have expected for so huge a storm, but a concentrated swirl of utter blackness in the mottled dark of the hurling clouds. The lightning dazzled down from its fringes. Its come-and-go brilliance blinded her vision and made the dark yet darker until it flashed again, but behind and beyond that center there seemed to be a different kind of darkness, a huge, squat column rising from the sea. She couldn’t be sure.

Rain came, sudden and dense, driven horizontal on the wind, rattling against their cloaks, sending the horses skittering sideways with the shock of it. Again the groom mastered them, coaxing and cursing. They started to climb. Now we’re for it, thought Maja.

But no. If anything the wind seemed to ease slightly. It was coming more from the left, too, or perhaps the road had turned that way, making it seem so. They plodded on, and yes, though the road began to twist to and fro to lessen the incline as the hill became steeper, checking her bearings with what she could see of the city below, and the sea and headland on her left, she thought she was right. Of course. The wind was only part of the colossal swirl that circled that dark center out to sea, and the line of the road was taking them more and more across the curve of it.

It was still a mighty gale, wherever it blew, but its power continued to lessen, and she felt that they were climbing not only out across it but also up out of it. And now when she looked out to sea, she was seeing slantwise to its course, so that the dark column she thought she had glimpsed was no longer directly behind the storm center and its blinding lightning, but a little to one side.

Yes, there was something there, something solid, not a plain column but a vast, vaguely human shape with a great, snouted, neckless head and something like arms. Between its hands, or paws, it held a long black rod which it brandished toward the storm. A lash of lightning sprang from its tip, shot out above the surface of the sea, curled around the storm center and whipped it round, as a child might do with a whipping-top, faster yet and faster, and at the same time drove it toward Larg.

The churning waves around the center began to shape themselves into a line of swirling waterspouts, taller than the tallest trees, which separated from the steady, implacable march of the main storm and charged toward the shore, all seeming to aim for the point where the two banks of the debouching river funneled in and became the outer harbor.

They never reached it. Through the weakened ward she sensed an invisible wave of a different order of magic sweep out from the city to meet the waterspouts near the center of their line and break it apart, and send the ones on either side crashing into their neighbors, and those into the ones beyond, and so on all the way down the line, until they had all collapsed into a tremendous flurry of foam, a white wave which spread outside sideways, lost direction and spent itself uselessly against headland and marsh.

Maja heard Ribek’s shout behind her.

“Holding her own against the little ’uns. Big one’s something else. We’re not going to make it. Horses go any faster?”

“Doing their best already, sir.”

“Let me down.”

Maja twisted her head to see him slip neatly from his saddle, wriggle out of his waterproof and start to run up the hill, awkwardly, with his arm clenched to his midriff and leaning sideways into the buffeting gale.

He vanished into the darkness ahead. The horses plodded on. The storm marched forward, seemed to falter, gathered itself, and came on. Faltered, and came on. Faltered longer, but still came on. It was now desperately near.

“Something happening up ahead,” yelled the groom. “That where we’re heading for, missy?”

She had already sensed the change, urgent and powerful, despite the barrier. With an effort she leaned sideways to peer past him. A pale light glowed up ahead, but everything round it was darkness. A blink of lightning showed her a twisted tree by the roadside. That was where Ribek had turned back, testing what happened to him beyond the barrier. The appalling pressure increased…the cactus…Jex and her amulet…they couldn’t be far…

“Let me down! Let me down!” she yelled.

Without waiting for him to stop she flung herself off the horse’s back, sprawled, scrambled up, gathered the heavy folds of her waterproof up around her and staggered on up the road, driving her feeble legs on and up…another step…another…A hand gripped her arm, helping her on.

“Almost there, missy,” grunted the groom. “Look at that, now!”

The light was moving. Against its glow the cactus stood for a moment, a black, gesturing shape which vanished as the light passed on.

“There!” she gasped. The groom hauled her forward. As they passed through the barrier she was almost overwhelmed by the other tempest that it had been holding back, the buffeting to-and-fro of Azarod’s demonic power and the counter-power of the mysterious moving light. She could no longer hear or see or feel, only sense a small, quiet focus of peace and rest somewhere in that turmoil. She wrapped the end of her head-scarf round her hand to pick Jex out from among the prickles. The amulet was easier to find, with firelight glinting off its bead. Odd…Not now. She looped the cord around her neck, dropped the pendant inside her blouse and slid the amulet onto her wrist.

The world returned.

Gasping, she stared around. The pale light was moving toward the headland at astonishing speed, as if its own separate gale were blowing it into the storm wind. There was a figure at its center, robed and still, the folds of its cloak unruffled by the tearing wind. Up the hill, where the light had been, only the reddish glimmer of embers—Saranja could get a fire going anywhere. Now in the lightning flashes, shapes around the fire: the horses, Saranja kneeling, bending over someone lying on the ground—two people lying on the ground…Ribek!

She tried to run, tripped on the folds of her cloak, fell, struggled up, wallowing in the wind-driven folds of waterproof…

“Easy now, missy, easy,” grunted the groom, as if speaking to one of his horses. “Where you trying to get to now, then?”

“Up there!”

“Get you there the sensible way, shall we? What else is horses for, if you don’t ride ’em?”

She let him lift her up into the saddle, and clung to the horse’s mane, peering into the dark, waiting for another lightning flash…

It came, and Ribek was sitting up, head bowed, his arms clasped round his knees. More lightning, and she saw the heave of his shoulders as his lungs gulped air. Benayu was lying on his back, as if fast asleep, Saranja beside him feeling for his pulse. Sponge lay with his head on his master’s chest, tense and watchful, ready to take on all the demons in the world.

Maja slid down, staggered to Ribek’s side, crouched and put her arm round his shoulders, for her comfort as much as his, then looked again out to sea.

The moving light had almost reached the headland. Azarod’s whip lashed toward it, and the lightning, almost continuous now, danced around it. The light didn’t falter. The roar of thunder seemed to shake the whole hill.

No, the hill had indeed shaken, but not because of the thunder, for that ceased as the lightning died, but another colossal bass roaring was still there, not blast upon blast like the thunder but steady and continuous. The whole hill shuddered to its sound. And by the next flurry of lightning they saw that a full half of the massive headland had fallen away, and the rocks it had been made of, millions of tons of them, weren’t simply lying out of sight at the foot of the new line of cliffs, but were shooting out like water sluicing across a tiled floor, forming a kind of causeway through the waves toward the place from which the demon Azarod arose.

Now the pale light came into view, speeding along the causeway toward the demon. Uselessly Azarod lashed with his whip. He turned away, but the rocks closed round his base before he could flee. They surged upward, building themselves into a rugged wall, into a vast rock pillar, encasing him, covering him over. The last howl of his tempest snapped short and he was gone.

The pale light faded. The wind eased and died. The clouds drifted apart, thinned, became silvery with moonlight, cleared away. Four people were left standing on a hillside, another inert on the ground at their feet, horses greeting each other with whickers in the stillness.

“What…what happened?” whispered Maja. “To Benayu, I mean? And Ribek?”

“I don’t know what happened,” said Saranja irritably. “Nobody’s told me what’s going on. I’ll tell you what I saw. I was sitting with Benayu worrying where you’d got to when Ribek came pounding up the hill. I’ve never seen a man so shattered with running. He pretty well fell flat in front of Benayu, but managed to crawl forward and hold out his fist in front of Benayu’s face. I thought he was going to punch him. ‘Breathe this. Can’t explain,’ he said. He only just managed to get the words out. He opened his hand, Benayu took a sniff and Ribek collapsed. Benayu looked baffled for a moment, and then he seemed to be listening to someone. Then he thought for a bit and nodded. ‘Very well, I agree,’ he said, and lay down like he is now.

“Then there was light all around us, and this woman standing beside him. I think it was a woman, but there was some kind of veil over her head and her robe covered the rest of her. I couldn’t see her feet, but I thought she was floating a little above the ground. She didn’t say anything, but she turned and looked out at that monster that seemed to be making the storm. She stood like that for quite a long while and…”

She broke off, staring over Maja’s shoulder. Maja turned and saw the pale light floating toward them. She helped Ribek to his feet and they stood and waited

“Well, at least she’s coming back,” said Saranja. “Perhaps she’ll do something about Benayu. He’s still alive, but I don’t like his pulse. It’s incredibly slow.”

The light reached them and stopped. The tall, veiled figure within it, neither man nor woman as far as Maja could see or sense, turned, raised an arm and pointed toward the pillar that imprisoned the demon. A light flared from its summit, and continued to burn as the figure turned again and stood beside Benayu. It seemed to shrink a little, and was now clearly a woman. She lifted her veil aside to reveal a calm, pale face, looking as if it had been carved from marble and polished to that unnatural smoothness. Or perhaps that was the effect of the moonlight.

The groom snatched off his hat and fell on his knees, covering his face with his hands.

“Stand, my friend,” said the woman. “You have done well. While my powers are on me I would like to reward you. I could take twenty years off your age if you choose.”

“More than’s right, m’lady. I’ll be happy to go in my natural time, but a good, healthy life for me and the missus till then…”

His voice tailed off, as if he felt ashamed to ask even for that.

“Good,” she said. “My blessing is on you.”

“What about Benayu?” said Saranja, firmly refusing to be awestruck.

“He must sleep a long while. What lies there is only his physical body, with barely enough of his inward self left to keep it breathing. All of the rest he passed into this form, as I had done out of my own body that still lies sleeping down in Larg, and with our joint powers we mastered the demon. I could not have done it without him. But now, if all that he had lent me, and besides that all that he has acquired by sharing this form with me, were to return in one rush where it belongs, it would destroy his physical body. He must sleep for all this night, and tomorrow, and another night, summoning it power by power in due order. Then, that next dawn, he can safely wake.

“But even then he must rest. Though he is naturally extremely gifted, he is very young, both for the work we did tonight and for the powers he now possesses. He will need to sleep long hours, and to do no magic at all until he knows himself to be fully ready. And you must care for him in every way you can. He is the Empire’s best hope for generations to come.”

She turned to the groom.

“You, my friend, may return to the city and tell the Proctors what you have seen and heard. You others can wait here, and in the morning the Proctors will decide how they can reward you all for what you have done. That will be their choice, not mine. Farewell.”

She was gone, and they were left on the hillside listening to the rejoicing bells of the city and gazing out at Larg’s new seamark summoning ships to harbor from league on league of moonlit ocean.